Fagstein’s Fourth Annual Subscription Challenge

To celebrate yet another year of employment, I’m giving away some of my money again.

And as in previous years, your participation does not involve you spending any money, just helping to inflate my ego a little bit.

In the past I’ve given to Dans la Rue, the Welcome Hall Mission and the Old Brewery Mission. Now all of them are annoying me regularly with letters in the mail, which I find annoying not because they’re charities asking for money but because they’re wasting so much on printing and postage. It just seems weird that there’s someone who has gone through the calculation and determined that this money needs to be spent to get people to donate.

This year, I was told by my boss that I’ve reached the five-year rate of pay at work. Under the current collective agreement, that’s the maximum rate, even though I’m still a part-time temporary employee whose future there isn’t at all set in stone.

While I could use some more job security … and my own weekly column too, while you’re at it, imagination … my bank account can attest to how much I’ve benefitted from these people paying me to do something I enjoy so much, so I’m giving back by sending my big donation to the Gazette Christmas Fund. Or The Gazette Christmas Fund. I’m still debating whether the “T” should be capitalized.

Anyway, here’s how it works: I’m going to give $1 of my own money for every new (legitimate) follower to my Twitter feed between now and one week from today (Dec. 21), and $2 for every new subscriber to my RSS feed. The former is currently 3,816 and the latter is 1,196 (though I don’t know how reliable that Feedburner count is). And to save myself going bankrupt in case this goes super-viral, there’s a combined limit of $2,000, which I can totally waive if I feel like it, because I set the rules, man.

So go forth and sing my praises, and together we can give away a bunch of my money and make me cool at the same time.

And if you insist on donating your own money, go ahead. I’m not going to stop you.

The T should be capitalized. When used mid-sentence, the paper is referred to as “The Gazette”, right?

Gazette style is that “The” is capitalized when referring to “The Gazette” and “The Gazette Christmas Fund”, but not when referring to other organizations like “the New York Times”. I think it’s mostly an ego thing.

The question grammatically is whether “Gazette” is being used as an adjective. In this case, “The Gazette Christmas Fund” makes sense as a proper noun, so you can capitalize the T. Same thing if it was “The Gazette’s Christmas Fund”. But if the name is “Gazette Christmas Fund”, then “the” would not be capitalized.

To T or noT To T : ThaT is the quesTion. It’s essentially a house style decision ( or house-style decision ) . Traditionally, it would depend on whether the ‘ official ‘ name is The Gazette or the Gazette, & , since my recollection as an ex-Montrealer is that it is The Gazette ( with a crossed zed which I can’t reproduce here ) , I vote for the uppercase T. This is precisely why the articles A, An, & The are invariably dropped for purposes of alphabetisation ; eg, is Dickens’ tale of the French Revolution titled A Tale Of Two Cities, or is it just Tale Of Two Cities ? I think that the A is officially part of the title, but I’d not bet any $ on that. Either way, poor Sydney Carton would meet Madame Guillotine either way in a stirring sacrifice which continues to resonate with us readers all these generations later. ( If you think the capitalisation question is complex currently, cast a glance at the British North America Act of 1867 & marvel at the Germanic over-capitalisation of most nouns. Fortunately, this Victorian experiment was quickly jettisoned. ) What are your current rules for Spring, Summer, Autumn ( or Fall ) , & Winter ? Caps or not ? Formerly, they were quite common, but I now find myself in the minority by retaining them. — signed respectfully, the ‘ Real ‘ Just Me ( beware of impersonators, for, though they do say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I should gladly settle for a Mother’s Day Card, or is it A Mother’s Day Card, or The … ? )

First you need something to read it with. There are various feed readers around (and many browsers or email readers can subscribe to them too), but the easiest is probably Google reader: http://www.google.ca/reader/. Sign in with your Google account, click on “subscribe” and add the address of this blog. It does the rest for you.

You can give to charities through canadahelps.org and choose not to forward your personal information (like address or email) to the beneficiary.
Moreover, tax receipts are centralized and delivered by canadahelps.org.
They subtract the 3% credit card fees but everything else goes to the charity…

I learned about that option only last year, when donating to Old Brewery. Won’t help much this year, as I’ve given to the Christmas Fund in the past and I’m a Gazette employee, so they already have my address. ;)